


Under the Shadow I Will Be

by Shorts84



Category: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu | Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:27:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28753614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shorts84/pseuds/Shorts84
Summary: A Christmassy Postlude to 'Far from the Tree'.
Relationships: Héloïse & Marianne (Portrait of a Lady on Fire), Héloïse/Marianne (Portrait of a Lady on Fire)
Comments: 66
Kudos: 114





	Under the Shadow I Will Be

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Far from the Tree](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26968405) by [Shorts84](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shorts84/pseuds/Shorts84). 



> There is no good reason for this to exist, other than I had imagined a few scenes for 'Far from the Tree' that didn't end up fitting. So, I knitted them together for you here. Happy Holidays.

Part 1

“ _Salutations. You can call me Mahogany Glo’om Dyspraxia Corvid Trait. I am possessed of lengthy mahogany tresses (hence my moniker) with aubergine highlights and scarlet ends which fall to my waist, and frozen azure eyes like pellucid teardrops. And many have told me that I look like Eva Green (Author’s Note: if you are unaware of her work, get thee hence from this place, sirrah!)._ ”

Marianne blinked her hazel orbs at the screen. “Sophie,” she said her voice as calm as a deep cerulean pool. “What the fuck am I reading?”

Sophie was rolling on the floor of the studio, laughing so hard that she could barely breathe. “No!” she managed. “No! You fucking have to! It’s amazing!”

Marianne looked back at the text, utterly bemused. There was not enough mulled wine in the world. “But…" she said plaintively, “why do I?”

Sophie managed to sit up, wiping her eyes. “Because you’re a nerd!” she declared. “And I am a nerd. And this is fan culture! And that fucking bobby dazzler there is a classic of the genre.”

From the quad, the bell sounded, heralding the end of prep, the start of the festivities. Marianne sipped at her mug, smelling the wine, the orange and the spices, feeling the heat on her face. Remembering. And trying not to mind the sting of it.

“At college, we have a book club,” Sophie was telling her. “We get really drunk and read it to each other. With voices. It’s… it’s been brilliant.”

The months had been good to Sophie. She looked tired, Marianne noticed, but in that way that only people barely nudging their twenties could look both tired and radiant, as if they had just raved all night and were ready to invent brunch.

“You’re having fun,” Marianne murmured.

“Yes.” Sophie beamed up at her. A new nose stud twinkled as she laughed. It suited her. “And I am prepared to share. Consider it part of your education,” she said, clapping Marianne on the shoulder. “All the things you missed when you were hiding behind your canvasses. Being old.”

Marianne looked at the screen. “I feel older than ever,” she confessed, before snapping the laptop closed. “Enough, Sophie. Real world is out there. Candles. Carols. Pies.”

“Roger that,” Sophie agreed and she downed her drink. “Pregame complete. Now. Bring on the wax play. Fuck, I love the Lumina.”

“Is she going to make it?”

They were walking over the quad together. The charging shadows of excited children flitted around them, trailing exhilarated huffs of breath, streamers in the dark. Sophie’s question lingered between them.

“Her train was cancelled,” Marianne answered.

The message had pinged her phone at lunch time, and sat heavily in her chest since then. “ _Bastard fucking Great Northern. Shoved onto bastard fucking stopper. Bastards._ ”

Marianne sighed. “She’s trying. That’s all I know.”

Sophie nodded. “Oh well,” she said with practised nonchalance. “Not the end of the world.”

“She’s never missed one.”

“Still,” Sophie told her. “In the grand scheme. Not.”

Marianne sighed. She had done that journey a couple of times, to and from Cambridge. Always at the weekend. Always when the trains were entirely buggered to hell.

Her first journey up, they had timed her arrival so carefully. They had the window of a break between lectures. They should have had time, and hand holding, and strolling and gentleness. But the trains had been a disaster, and Marianne had run almost an hour late. She had sprinted from the platform to find her on the road outside, already straddling a bicycle, wide-eyed and beckoning, feet poised to push off. One kiss, messy, and unbalanced and half swallowed in apology, and the warm waist, the solid ribs.

“Go.”

“Okay. I’ll find you.”

“Go. I’ll park myself somewhere in town.”

“Love you.”

“You’ll be late.”

“Okay. Okay.”

Marianne had watched the beautiful, hunched shape pedalling away, her emotions lost in a swooping whirl of happiness and disappointment.

She had walked the unfamiliar road into the city centre, alone. And cold. It had been bitterly cold that weekend.

“Yes, I know,” Marianne grumbled. “It’s not the end of the world. It just feels like it.”

Sophie rolled her eyes in the darkness. “You two,” she declared, “have no chill at all.”

“Do we not?” Marianne asked, wrong-footed. “I feel like we’ve learned some chill. We have acquired chill. We’ve had to.”

“Nope,” Sophie said, with a firm shake of the head. “You haven’t. There’s not one little itty bit of chill between the pair of you.”

“Oh,” Marianne groaned, half smiling. “I mean, that’s kind of humiliating.”

“It’s adorable,” Sophie corrected. “Disgusting. But adorable.”

Across the quad, someone called for Marianne. “Miss B,” she noted quietly at the distant shape, waving from the classics room.

“Still not calling her Veronica?” Sophie teased.

“I know. I know,” Marianne whispered. “She keeps asking me to. I just…”

“Marianne!” The clear, commanding voice slicing through the evening like a firework. “Do you have a moment?”

“I’ll get us some candles,” Sophie grinned making good her escape. “See you at the bonfire.”

Marianne was not so sure about the lack of chill.

They had learned patience at least. Or relearned it. That first trip to Cambridge, waiting in a bookshop café for the end of lectures, Marianne had sat with the same cup of coffee for an hour and forty five minutes, reading something about Hundertwasser. And she had ached. She had physically groaned from wanting, shifting in that secluded corner, the collar of her coat tucked high against the draught, twitching with irrational eagerness at every footfall on the wooden stair. She remembered glancing at the undergraduates, still wearing their brand new college scarves, and hoping to goodness that none of them could tell.

She had marvelled at the preceding weeks. At how she had found a calm routine that was hers and hers alone. Swimming in the mornings, before eating breakfast in the studio, murmuring on the speakerphone together, one preparing for a lesson, the other for a run.

“Cold today.”

“Careful on the Backs, if it’s icy.”

“How was the pool?”

“Delightful. Found a verruca sock in the filter.”

“You know, it’s your own breakfast you’re risking. Not mine.”

Hanging up, without histrionics, when they heard the new gap year student come in. Rhiannon. Nice kid. Shy. Reminded Marianne a little of herself. But reminded her also just how much she had appreciated Sophie. How much she had depended on her.

Teaching. The long, absorbing, creative, hectic hours. Teaching and teaching. Walks in the dusk. Fireside chats with Miss Blanchard. With Veronica. Over drinks in the drawing room.

And never once had she sat alone and ached as she did in that coffee shop. It must have been the sense of proximity. Now, it would seem, the gauge of what could be encompassed by their nearness had expanded, until Marianne’s hunger could swamp a city.

“ _Need you_ ,” she had texted, when there had still been twenty-five long minutes to wait.

“ _And now my neighbour is laughing_ ,” had come the slow reply.

“ _Your neighbour is a heartless bastard._ ”

“ _He says, and I quote, ‘Accurate’._ ”

“Marianne,” Miss Blanchard sighed into the dark. “Bless you. Just a hand with these if you wouldn’t mind.” She indicated a pile of legionary helmets, scattered between the desks in her classroom, cardboard and tinfoil and years of enthusiasm. “They wanted them down for the last lesson and I…” She smiled. “I’m just not tall enough to put them back again.”

Marianne stood on a chair, lining helmets neatly atop the bookcase, into their shadows of dust.

“You know she puts these costume changes into her lesson plans?” Miss Blanchard was saying idly, passing up the last few. “I used to walk past, see them mucking about, playing silly buggers with paper gladii, and think she had maybe finally let her hair down. Let herself go a bit. But no,” she clicked, with a wry smile. “All planned out, months in advance.”

“She’s very good at organised spontaneity,” Marianne agreed, a nudge of heat pressing in her gut. Wine in the water butt.

“She was very specific in her notes,” Miss Blanchard said, with a grin. “Togas. Amphorae. Helmets. I have to figure out how to make honey cakes next term.”

“I can help, if you like. The recipe’s good.”

“Now, now,” Miss Blanchard replied with a grim smile. “You know what she’d say to that. You let me twist your arm too much.”

“I don’t. I mean, you don’t. I mean.” Marianne protested, frowning. “We don’t… mean to.”

Miss Blanchard smiled up at her from below, easily passing up the last of the helmets, one hand on her hip.

“Of course not, dear. Thank you, by the way. Time was, I would have been up there like a damn squirrel, but now…”

“How ever did you get them down?” Marianne asked.

“With the attic hook,” Miss Blanchard replied breezily. “Doesn’t work in reverse, I have found. That’s the last of them.” She was looking at Marianne curiously, from under that head of curls as she dusted her hands. “Have you heard any more?” she asked.

Marianne sighed. “Not since tea,” she confessed, hopping down from the chair, tucking it in. “Sounded as though there might have been problems on the tube, just to top it all off.”

“Well,” Miss Blanchard said with a tight smile. “She’ll get here. Never fret. She’ll miss the bonfire, but…” And something on Marianne’s face must have fallen, because Miss Blanchard was suddenly touching her upper arm. “And, there! You look just as glum about it as she would.”

Marianne took a deep breath, and hoped she wasn’t being silly. Hoped she wasn’t going to overstep a boundary. “It’s sort of our anniversary,” she muttered.

“Ah.” And the hand, drew back a little, before giving one hearty rub to the shoulder. “Gosh, yes. That’s.”

Were they both thinking of their conversation? Almost a year ago exactly. Almost precisely to the moment. _I just wish you wouldn’t._ But she had. They had. And so much had changed since then that it scarcely seemed fair to remember.

“Doesn’t time fly?” Miss Blanchard said brightly, stepping away. “If I had realised, I would have put something on ice for you both. Hoisted the bunting.”

Marianne smiled. “You rotten tease.”

“Of course I am,” Miss Blanchard countered. “I am both English and uncomfortable. Teasing is my one defence.”

“Against?”

Miss Blanchard stole a bashful glance. “Remorse?” she suggested. She stood with her hands on her hips, a defensive wall of desks and distance parting them. “I never quite apologised. I’m a terrible coward like that, you may have noticed.”

All of a sudden, there was a lump in Marianne’s throat. “There’s really no need,” she mumbled. And then, because she, too, was English, she felt the need to change the subject suddenly and completely. “Anyway, if you still insist on taking in that houseguest of yours over Christmas, I am pretty sure that I will be the one having to apologise.”

Miss Blanchard laughed. “It’s just for two days,” she replied. “I am sure I will find him very entertaining.”

Marianne raised an eyebrow. And tried not to feel the unavoidable mortification in advance. “Yes, well, if he mentions Rio, change the subject. Please. For my sake.”

She strolled down towards the bonfire, trying to harness her anticipation. Time, she thought. That’s all it was. A few hours. An orderly arrangement of minutes and seconds. Time would bring her at last. Even when it ran slow as molasses.

Even in the coffee shop that day in Cambridge, even when time had run slower than the flow of hardened glass, it had brought her all the same. Marianne had known her step immediately, recognised it on the hollow stair with such electrifying certainty that she could not fathom how any other had turned her head; had caused her to so much as lift her eyes. She had stood up before the tall shape rounded the head of the stair, the door of the café, before she could even see the blonde hair, the broad shoulders.

And it would be the same tonight, Marianne told herself. A little wait, that would seem longer than was fair. And then, her. And then Christmas, and New Year, and all the rest of it. Of course, all of that. But first, her. Her, above all and everything.

The bonfire seemed smaller this year. Perhaps there had been less to get rid of, she mused. But the excitement of the children seemed to suggest that it was not the blaze, but Marianne’s heart for the whole business that had shrunk. The choir were at it already, small reedy voices piping into the pin lit dark, crowding candles between faces and hymnals.

_He is Alpha and Omega. He the source, the ending, He, of the things that are, that have been, and that future years shall see._

And the spotted crowd joined in with the refrain, gruff and jolly and sheepish and half amazed to hear themselves singing at all.

_Evermore and evermore._

Marianne headed for the food trestles, hoping for a refill of wine.

The term had been good, in many, many ways. And a wrench, in others. Faces from year eight, the old year eight, her first seniors, Esme, Callum, Harriet, all gone away, never to return. Marianne caught herself on several occasions yelling the wrong names on the netball court, or in the corridors, often in class, and kicking herself for the mistake each time.

On the other hand, there was no mistaking Rhiannon. ‘More was the pity,’ said a cruel little voice with Marianne’s cadence. She should try harder with the girl, she knew. She really should. But there could be no comparison. Practical and organised, but meek and unhurried, stringing no more than three words together at a time, and not one of them rude, wearing her apron like a shield.

Marianne knew she should try again.

And the classics room across the quad, left dark in the evening now, the occasional flash of bubble curls at the wide windows only breaking the spell of soft imagining.

“You really miss her, don’t you?” Jodie had observed one night. Marianne had been drinking her chamomile under the portico of the art block, supposedly on duty as the boarders filed from club time down to the dormitories. She had not even realised the direction in which she must have been staring; the locked door, the bare brick step.

There didn’t seem to be any point in pretending. “Yes,” she had said.

Jodie had tipped her head to one side. “It would probably be more of an issue if you didn’t,” she said. “I suppose.” Mannerisms that Marianne had slowly, warily, learned not to dread; childish manipulations giving way to startling insight.

“It can be useful,” Marianne nodded, “to take a step back, and see what you miss. I’ve done it before. Leads to good decisions.”

“Yes,” Jodie agreed, jumping down the stairs to the lower school, her cardigan flapping like untried wings. “The absolute best decisions.”

It had been a good term for Jodie. Everyone agreed.

She was settling.

A term of relaxed smiles. Easy laughter. Biscuits at break time, and muddy falls, and letters written to her older siblings.

Marianne could make out the shape of the girl, taller every day, patiently leading her toddling nephew around the bonfire by the hand, pointing to the sparks and stars.

“She’s getting there,” Miss Blanchard had murmured one evening, over sherry. “Thanks to you.”

“Making progress, do you think?” Marianne had replied, hopeful but cautious. Miss Blanchard’s portrait, hanging with its rosy bruises in the upper school, still sometimes gave her pause.

A firm nod. A raise of the glass. “To somewhere better.”

Marianne went for walks. ‘Almost alone’, she called it, a phone call in her headphones, her raised hood cradling the distant voice close to her cheek, like a secret.

“Windy?”

“A bit.”

“Good view?”

“Nearly dark. Chilly.”

“Are you doing that cute jumpy thing?”

Marianne had stopped herself mid hop. “Jumpy thing?” she had asked.

“You know.” The voice had a smile to it, playful and lazy, the jaw tense from resting on a fist, propped on a desk in a student bedsit. “When you’re cold, you do those little two footed jumps.”

“Do I?” She knew that she did. Knowing was not the point. “Like a frog, or…?”

“Like a fox on a trampoline.”

Marianne had laughed, but the sound had flitted lonely over the hillside, away down to the glistening orange roofs, to the pitted slates, seamed and veined by street lamps.

They would talk about their days. Their somethings and nothings.

“What are you having for dinner?”

“Jacket potato and chilli leftovers. I miss your legs.”

“Hmm. Which one, if you had to choose?”

“The right.”

“Shocking. You’re not supposed to have a favourite.”

“You asked! And it cuddles me in the mornings, so I’m not even sorry.”

“Puts in the hours?”

“Certainly does.” She stood for one brief moment on the lip of the hill, the limit of her dominion. “What are you reading?”

A groan. “‘Via Nova,’” the voice muttered. “Don’t ask.”

“Wouldn’t dream.”

“Are you heading back already? The wind’s in your microphone a bit.”

“Yes. Sorry. No point in staying. Is it good, at least?”

“It’s bringing me back to you,” she heard. “That’s all I think about now. Page by pompous page. Word after word after word. They’re all bringing me back.”

“Soon.”

“Soon.” And, again, the rush of air that was a smile. “Except for my left leg. Which is sulking. And may well stay in Cambridge.”

“Marianne!” Sophie was springing up the slope out of the darkness towards the trestle tables, all flashing teeth and bonfire burnished hair. A candle was already set into the palm of one hand, another was brandished like a glow-stick. “Where have you been?” she cried. “They’d nearly run out. I had to biff a ten year old for this. And look! I found the new me!” Rhiannon was waiting on the lawn below, twisting on her heels, waving shyly as if she and Marianne had not just worked the whole day together; the whole term. Marianne nodded, smiled patiently. She tried to return the wave, but her hand was claimed and levelled, as the wax was melted for her, liberally applied. Sophie murmured, her head tipped forward, “She’s hilarious! Why didn’t you tell me she’s hilarious?”

“She is?” Marianne tried to hide her surprise. “I mean, it’s been kind of hard to tell, between the ringing silences and deathly quiet.”

The brown eyes flicked up, and Sophie was grinning. “Oh. Marianne. Have you been intimidating the new girl?” she asked. “Is she overawed? Thunderstruck?” Marianne could not reply for a moment. She had never in her life considered herself even remotely daunting. The idea baffled her. “Well, I can soon fix that,” Sophie declared. “Hey, Rhiannon!” The girl on the lawn below them raised her face, gripping her candle like an amateur, a brimming glass of wine steaming in her other fingers. “Have you worked out that Marianne’s a great-big-lanky-soppy dweeb, yet?”

Somewhat unexpectedly, Rhiannon smiled. “I had guessed,” she shouted back.

Sophie beamed. “What gave it away?”

Rhiannon had a twinkle to her, as she answered. “All the Latin.”

Sophie crowed, her breath huffing skyward, and she practically leapt down the slope in response. “Well now!” she exclaimed. “Let me regale you with the grand saga of Marianne and All The Latin.”

“Sophie!” Marianne called after her. “Sophie, don’t you dare!” But the shapes had melted into the darkness together, and Marianne was left alone again, with an empty mug and a slowly weeping candle.

A message pinged into her phone.

“ _Bastard fucking Southwest trains._ ”

And her heart could neither leap nor sink, dead bolted in place by grim patience. She wandered to the bonfire’s edge, and thought of the good things. The Other Good Things.

The children.

Her favourites from the year before of course, but the year fours as well. Their arrival, all shiny and timid, with flashes of toddler boisterousness still showing through, like downy feathers not quite moulted.

The first round of repeated lessons, finding comfort in repetition, and new things to love in the old plans. “Draw a portrait of your neighbour, but do it without taking your pen off the page. Now, try with your eyes closed.” “We’re going to do an Egyptian painting of life at Otterbourne. How would you show a cricket match in that style, do you think? How about an assembly? What angle would be best to show those things as they really are?”

Some elderly members of Marcus Thompson’s family had hit upon the bright idea of commissioning drawings from him. Of non-chickens. Almost every day he would seek Marianne out to ask about the finer points of drawing okapi, or stag beetles, or vintage Aston Martins.

“Whatever are these for?” Marianne had asked him on one occasion, as they hunted through Google images for an interesting angle on Highland cows.

The boy had sighed, and said in his endearing crackle, “Three pounds a pop.”

And Marianne had managed to contain her laughter. “Not too shabby,” she had commented.

A slow nod in agreement, and a finger indicating the animal destined for the printer and artistic immortality. “Not too shabby at all.”

The flat sold easily and well. A little later than they would have liked, but it all went through smoothly in the end. There had been more concern about the right people than the right price.

“They do seem nice,” Marianne had reported, after the fifth time of being asked. “He runs your route, now. And I keep bumping into her at the everything shop.”

She had seemed satisfied. “Sugar soap and wallpaper knives?”

“Not just yet. They’re still at the realising-they-might-need-a-loo-brush stage.”

“Never! Loo brushes are dreadful, dirty things that only happen to parents and landlords.”

“Along with sink plungers.”

“And laundry racks.” Marianne had given herself a moment, to allow the question that she could not be the one to ask settle in her chest, as something to store away and mull over alone, when the voice had said quite simply, “That’ll be us one day.”

The burst of happiness had been so quick and vibrant, that it had felt almost like alarm. She had found she needed to joke her way around it. “Nah,” she murmured. “We kept all of your odds and sods, remember? Boxed up. Ready to deploy.”

And there had been a little laugh, soft and warm. “My poor, hibernating loo brush. All alone in Mummy’s garage.”

Marianne had smiled. “His time will come.”

The school had sent her on an umpiring course, which had been hilarious and exhausting and rewarding.

“That way they can use you in tournaments. Pay you a bit more,” Mrs Badger had told her. “And, after all Nigel’s trouble, I would like to retire with some knees left, thank you very much.”

Marianne was just beginning to believe herself sporty, at long last. An odd and not unpleasant feeling.

And of course, there had been the promise of the room in Cambridge. Like a nun’s cell. Covered in books, and one blanket from home.

“Not forever,” they had murmured. And it wasn’t. It had been for a slow, thorough, ninety minutes before the next lecture. And then, for a dizzying, hurried hour before the first housemate was back. Rucked clothing and sweat and gasped giggling; then, panting calm, hot cheeks and smeared faces, ears still pricked, hands wishing they had taken longer over one another, wishing they had lingered. Finally, it had been for a quiet night of holding and gazing and slow palms waking one another at odd moments of darkness, to whisper and want, and remember themselves. Before another train. And three more weeks. And the remembered necessity of Other Good Things.

“ _Am I still in your Ovid?_ ” Marianne had asked.

“ _Yes_.” The reply had been immediate. And Marianne had frowned. They had said goodbye only minutes before.

“ _How can you be so sure?”_ she asked. “ _Maybe I have been stolen away._ ” And a photo of the book had followed, held against the pale blue sky and the bat ears of Kings, the razor’s edge of gleaming paper peeking between softened pages. Marianne had smiled. “ _Always with you?_ ”

“ _Everywhere and all the time._ ”

It was just time.

But the Lumina was nearly over. The fire had mouldered into a glowing sulk, more smoke than heat. The food had been packed away, the mulled wine taken inside for the after party. The stragglers were a mix of those anxious to leave and those who never really left at all.

Through the slow dismantling of the term, a figure approached, picking its way between the dark shapes towards the bonfire’s edge; dodging over-tired pupils as they gunned for one last pell-mell dash before Christmas. It was Rhiannon; wine glass empty, now, candle properly installed. Her brown eyes glittered over flushed cheeks as she matched Marianne’s gaze into the heart of the dying flames.

“That explains it,” she said.

Marianne stiffened, frowned into the fluttering of her own candle. “Explains what?” she asked.

“You’re pining,” Rhiannon said, with a smile that was no longer shy, but pretty and tipsy and sympathetic. She nodded to herself, and gripped her lip below her teeth. “Me too,” she whispered.

Marianne blinked. “Really?”

The red head dropped forward, and the words staggered forth in hesitant columns, timid, but beautifully formed. “She’s in York. Art History. And. And I haven’t told my family yet.”

“Oh.”

“Sorry, if I’ve been a wet blanket about it all,” the girl murmured, turning this way and that in the light. “I haven’t known what to say. I’ve never,” she grimaced, “really known what to say. About her.”

“That’s okay. It’s a big thing to talk about with anyone, let alone a stranger.” And Marianne had to smile ruefully herself. “Let alone a sulky stranger.”

“Sophie said you would understand.” There was a beeping from on top of the hill. One of the station taxis had pulled around in front of the Master’s house. “That’s probably for me,” Rhiannon said, sauntering off at the same languid, sleepy pace at which she did everything. “Merry Christmas when it comes, Marianne,” she said.

“What’s her name?” Marianne called after her. The car was still beeping. Perhaps there were parental cars behind, anxious to get by, to get home.

“Victoria,” Rhiannon called. “And yours?”

The horn was honking, still. But Marianne was no longer heard it. Atop the bank, by the empty trestle tables, a tall shape had appeared, looking down towards the fire. Caught in the instant of searching, scanning the gloomy field, squinting from the blaring floodlights of the house, the pavilion, the car headlamps.

“Héloïse!”

The shape flew down to her, whirled her candle into darkness, and danced her into the ground.

Part 2

Héloïse!

Héloïse, Héloïse, Héloïse.

“Héloïse,” she gasped out. And the mouth stopped moving. The green eyes lifted.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, yes.” She tightened her fingers through the hair, against the hot scalp, pressed inwards, arched up to meet, to plead. “Yes! Don’t stop… I just… I miss saying it.”

She felt the laugh inside. Low and sweet. Followed by the tongue; warm, practised, perfectly attentive. “Marianne,” murmured between waves, long and deliberate. “Marianne.”

Héloïse smiled at her later across the pillows, stroking the dark curls patiently back and back from sticky temples.

“You’re staring,” she said quietly.

Marianne was still gliding down from her high, her breath quick and half gulped down, her determined gaze unwavering. “Of course,” she panted. “So are you.”

Héloïse smiled and denied nothing. She wriggled nearer, swimming across the bed, their bed, tucking her arms into her chest to be nearer. “Making up for lost time,” she suggested, and Marianne grunted her agreement, gathering her close, glorying in her heaviness.

She traced the shape on one eyebrow with her thumb, admiring the waxy softness, how it feathered so prettily into the freckled temple. “I have seen far too much of my own face for months,” she murmured and Héloïse softly kissed the inside of her wrist as it passed within reach. “I much prefer yours.”

“Isn’t it strange?” came the reply, the mouth resting and flexing against the skin. “I expect you everywhere. Around every corner. In every crowd. When I wake, my hands hunt for you. When I reach for you at night, I sometimes think…”

“You reach for me?”

She nodded. “Often,” she whispered so softly it was more breath than voice, something felt not heard.

“What do you do?”

“Well, generally,” she murmured, “since October, I wake up.”

Marianne drew the duvet over them, beckoning a billow of their body heat up into noses and open mouths, over their fast cooling skin like a second blanket. “Not tonight,” she said.

“No,” Héloïse smiled, stretching muscles, cramped from the journey, tired from the reunion. “Tonight, you have properly knackered me.”

When the arm sneaked over her hip sometime after four that morning, Marianne did wake a little. She shimmied backwards, tucking her bottom in against the naked warmth of angled thighs and sleep-softened stomach. But Héloïse’s breathing never wavered, rasping softly and steadily into her neck and ear. And Marianne drifted soon after, claimed and very comfortable.

“So are we here for the whole holiday?”

Héloïse sat cross-legged on the bed, tackling a tangerine. Her brow was furrowed in concentration, trying to peel the thing neatly into a bowl, wearing the duvet over her shoulders like an open cloak. Marianne lay before her on the beanbag, sipping her coffee, admiring the view.

“That’s the basic plan,” she confirmed. “Us in here…”

“…embarrassing nobody…” Héloïse grinned over citrus bright fingertips.

Marianne stretched languorously under Héloïse’s eyes, completely adoring. “… and, in the big house, it will be your mum, holding all stockings and presents hostage…”

“… and guest!”

Marianne glanced up, checking for the tease. If anything, the smile was bigger this time. She hid her face. “You’re loving this, aren’t you?” she grumbled.

“I certainly am,” Héloïse nodded vigorously. “I anticipate hilarity.”

“I wish you wouldn’t!” Marianne crept off the beanbag with a groan, rested her chin plaintively on the mattress edge. “Promise me you’ll still like me afterwards,” she begged.

“After parental collision?” Héloïse popped a segment of the fruit into her mouth, and chewed, her eyes narrowed in apparent consideration. Until she swallowed, dived forward, and kissed the very end of Marianne’s nose. “I will worship you constantly,” she said, resting her cheek on the sheet, so that she could kiss Marianne’s chin, the point of her jaw, the velvety scented skin between the ear and shoulder. “Unflinchingly. Even at Christmas. Even in front of your Dad.”

Marianne groaned again. “It’s not…” she tried to explain. “It’s not us… that I’m worried about. So much.”

“Yes, yes,” Héloïse recited, drawing Marianne up onto the bed, into her waiting lap, into the duvet’s wings. “He’s lived the life. He’s seen some shit, smoked a lot of it, and can never go back to Brazil. And I guarantee you,” she murmured into Marianne’s reluctant ear, “my mother will not be fazed.”

Marianne screwed her eyes shut. “Morocco,” she muttered.

“Morocco?” Héloïse asked, her hands suddenly still.

“It’s Morocco he can’t go back to,” Marianne muttered.

“Christ,” Héloïse murmured, displaying distressing levels of interest. “I was joking. Why?”

Marianne buried her face in Héloïse’s tummy before grumbling something inarticulate along the lines of, “Mfmppphummm stole a leopard mmmphtfump.”

And Héloïse did not stop laughing for the next four minutes straight.

Sophie’s eyes kept bouncing between the pair of them later when they met in the pub. They were playing Jenga, amid sticky pools of Saturday afternoon shandy, but nobody’s attention was truly on the game. Certainly, Sophie’s was not.

“So, wait one tender fucking second,” she said, sounding almost offended. “Whose genius idea was this?”

Héloïse and Marianne’s eyes met around the gently swaying wooden tower. In retrospect, it hardly even seemed to have been a decision.

“Mummy’s,” Héloïse concluded, one hand busy extracting a particularly precarious brick. The tower gently pirouetted with her movement as if interested, but unthreatened. Héloïse was unnervingly good at this game, and liked a challenge.

“We did tell her that he would be on his own,” Marianne mused, “that it might be a neat solution.

“But Mummy gave the go ahead. Mummy issued the invitation.”

Sophie scoffed at the answer. “It’s not about who’s legally liable!”

“It might be,” Marianne muttered darkly. “Give him half a chance.” And Héloïse snorted, her hand wavering just slightly.

“You two have just spent weeks apart,” Sophie said, her hands spread on the table. “Your parents have never met. And you choose, of all the cursed, loaded, _boozy_ times of year, you choose Christmas to see how you all get on?” Sophie gaped. “You’re both bananas,” she declared. “I mean, fuck’s sake, it might be less stressful for you to just wait for the wedding.” The tower wavered noticeably at this but ultimately stood firm as Sophie stomped unwittingly through into safer territory. “What possessed you?”

Marianne shrugged. “We just thought it might be nice.”

“Based on what?” Sophie demanded. “Héloïse has never even met your dad. Whose name by the way is…?”

“Steven.”

“There it is! Steven! My man, Steve!” She lifted her eyes to the beamed ceiling in mimed relief. “Steven Beaumont. Mystery finally solved.”

“It’s Steven Usdin,” Marianne corrected softly. “If you don’t want a very detailed lecture on the ongoing oppression of women by the patronymic. And their erasure by marriage more generally, of course.” The tower swayed again, and this time, Marianne caught the cautious spring of eyes, green as home.

“And what if I _do_ want just such a lecture?” Sophie said in a lowered voice, her bright gaze narrowing. “I’m asking for Veronica’s sake, you understand. What if I wanted a debate, Marianne? What if I want it long? What if I want it… passionate?”

Marianne shrugged, watching the helpless twitch of Héloïse’s hand. “Well.” She rolled her eyes. “A couple of tequilas and some Prince should do it.”

And the tower collapsed.

They walked home later, Héloïse twined round and about and through her, against the dark, against the cold and the distance so recently vanquished.

“Does he really not mind?” she asked.

Marianne had been thinking of other things, softly nervous things. “Mind?”

“You being here.”

“More than my being in London, you mean?” Marianne shot a grin over her shoulder, into the steady eyes, the serious mouth. She was warm and happy and expectant. In the mood to tease. “You think this place can compete for his scorn with the gatekeepers and moneyed wannabes of the art world?”

There was a squeeze. “You know what I mean.”

Marianne halted them both, kissed the pretty nose. “He would say that it was my life,” she replied, knowing exactly. “My choice to make. My conscience to settle.”

“You don’t worry about disappointing him?”

“No. I’ve never had to live his principles,” Marianne whispered back. “Just so long as I have some of my own. But still, I mean,” she teased, “he’ll love _you,_ you budding baby Bolshevik.”

“I hope so,” said Héloïse. Marianne waited for the edge. For the joke. But it never came, and they slithered home together along icy pavements, eager in their silence.

Two short weeks and a bushel of holly decorations later, they were standing next to Miss Blanchard on the doorstep of the Master’s house. The three of them had heard the engine’s approach from the sitting room, chugging like an excitable biplane, and had crowded onto the porch to wait.

The Jag swept round into view, just a little too quickly for Marianne’s nerves. She could see that the passenger seat was laden with wrapped presents, which was surprising in many ways, all of them objectively unjust, and that her father was wearing a tweed jacket over his favourite Rage Against the Machine t-shirt. Which gave her much firmer grounds for her budding embarrassment. Héloïse was beaming, of course, and Miss Blanchard waved unnecessarily, an amused smile already edging over her face. She must have been briefed. Marianne wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

Her father yanked the parking brake and loped out of the driver’s side.

“Ho ho ho, ladies!” he said, seeing Marianne run down to give him a hug. And then, as if taking in the spectacle properly for the first time, he stopped a moment, wincing up at the house, around at the grounds, at the two women waiting for him either side of the door like a guard detail. He looked a little nervous.

“Nice car,” Miss Blanchard said.

He stood on one hip, sniffed through his moustache. “Thanks,” he said. “Bit old. Needs work.”

Miss Blanchard replied still smiling, “Suits you, then.” Cheeky, Marianne thought.

But her father had laughed. “Yeah. Maybe.” Staying as close to the bonnet as he could examining his shoes as they toed the gravel. “Nice gaff,” he responded.

“Not mine,” Miss Blanchard answered.

He smiled widely. “Better and better!” At last, lurching forward, his hand extended in front of him like a lance, he burbled, “Steven.”

Miss Blanchard shook it warmly. “Veronica. Héloïse is my fault,” she said, indicating her still grinning daughter.

“Ah. Well. Marianne is my excuse, so that works nicely.”

As the four of them made their way inside together for the first time, Héloïse whispered into Marianne’s ear, “Ruggedly handsome.”

“Shut your damn mouth, Godard,” Marianne hushed back.

“But he is.”

“So what’s the sitch?” he asked later. “What’s the festive deal?” The coffee had been brewed. The presents had been brought in. They tumbled together now beneath the tree, brashly wrapped testaments to the hopes of goodwill, the nervousness of seeming either extravagant or mean. Well. Marianne was nervous. Her father, irritatingly, seemed completely at his ease all of a sudden, jammed into one end of a sofa like a mismatched throw cushion. His coffee cup rested on his thigh. He looked glaringly at home. “Are you devoted church people, aesthetic church people, no church people?” Marianne saw Héloïse and Miss Blanchard glance at one another almost guiltily. And her dad hummed to himself, squinted into the silence. “No biggie either way,” he said smoothly. “I’m game. Brought a clean t-shirt, my ‘tache comb and everything.”

“We normally go to midnight mass,” Héloïse said. “In the village.”

“For the music,” her mother explained. “And the sermon is shorter.”

Héloïse added quietly, “Gets it all out of the way.”

Miss Blanchard slapped her daughter’s leg just lightly. “Héloïse, letting the side down.”

“What?” her daughter shot back. “Grandpa was the last person to really care.”

“ _I_ care,” her mother retorted. “It’s lovely.”

“Okay then, he was the last person to _believe_.”

Marianne snatched a glance at her father. He was smiling now in a way that meant he had the measure of his subject, knew all the angles. She felt a sudden panic in her scalp.

“Midnight mass sounds great,” she said quickly, before the spat became either an argument or spectator sport or a target. “But you’ll have to tell me about all the sitting and standing. I’ve never been.”

The eyes of both Miss Blanchard and Héloïse were suddenly on her, blank, uncomprehending.

“To church?” Héloïse asked. Her tone sounded, if anything, impressed. “What. Never?”

“Nope.”

“My fault,” Steven announced, raising his hand. He was positively grinning by this time.

“Is that a problem?” Marianne asked. She wanted to kick him. “I… we can sit at the back.”

“It’s not a members’ club, dear,” Miss Blanchard said. “We can sit wherever we jolly well like.”

“But we don’t have to go at all,” Héloïse said, “if you object.”

“It’s not that,” Marianne said softly. “I just don’t want to embarrass you.”

“You won’t,” Héloïse and her mother said together with absolute certainty.

“I might!” Steven interjected brightly.

“Well, you’ll just have to sit by me then, won’t you?” Miss Blanchard said. And her voice was suddenly firm. Her eyes met his with blazing clarity. And she added, “Can’t have you flustering the vicar, Steven.”

After a pause that seemed to drag until Epiphany, his smile broke open. “You’ll keep me in line?” he asked. He was resting his chin on his fist, leaning on the sofa’s edge.

And the blaze of her eyes twinkled just slightly in return. “On a very tight leash.”

“Well, they’re a pair of zippy whizzbangs, aren’t they?”

Marianne and her father, just a moment of privacy between them, while the hostess and her daughter went to lay the table for dinner. And he couldn’t help himself even for that long.

“Dad. Please.”

“No, no, I mean, I can see it,” he said admiringly. “I can certainly see it.” He looked at her for a moment, resisting laughter, reached over and fluffed her hair. “Raised a woman of taste, didn’t I?”

“Dad.” Marianne angled herself towards him, dying inwardly, loving him fiercely, and hating that she wished him even slightly different. “Dad, I am begging you. The safe-for-work anecdotes only. Please.”

“On my honour,” he said simply.

She laughed drily, nervously. “Is that supposed to be reassuring?” she asked.

They were called to dinner before Marianne even realised she might have hurt him, and by then it was far too late to check.

“She was only a little leopard!”

Miss Blanchard roared with laughter, her head tilting all the way back on her long neck in the candlelight. Steven was grinning, delighted, his mouth full of lasagne. At least he swallowed before continuing.

“And she was endangered. Belonged to this yacht idiot. Sorry. Son of yacht idiot. He only foisted her… sorry… _loaned_ her to this shoot we were doing because the zitty little lizard wanted to meet some models. And the brand went along with it because… Because billionaire, I suppose. I was completely livid. Arrogant, entitled piece of…”

“Dad!” Marianne hissed in warning.

Her father stopped himself, squinted at his plate. And Marianne wondered again about whether she had hurt him in her caution. “Anyway, in the long term, a boat’s no place for a big cat, is it? Hardly fair.”

Miss Blanchard recovered enough to prompt. “So you absconded with it? With a leopard?”

“Absconded.” Steven leaned back in his chair, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin. Marianne had never seen him use a napkin in all her life. Nor heard him tell this particular story without the phrase ‘oil-princeling scuzzy-cunt’ making an appearance. “Absconded!” he said, his eyes shining. “Yeah! I like that. Much more official than ‘I popped the fuzzy little rascal in a taxi and took her to the zoo.’”

Miss Blanchard laughed again.

Marianne really tried not to be a bundle of nerves after dinner as they all walked down to the church. She and Héloïse were arm in arm, which was her first cause for concern.

“Are we allowed to be like this?” she had checked quietly. She thought her voice had been low enough that only Héloïse would hear, but Miss Blanchard had spun on the path in front of them, hot with outrage.

“You had better be,” she said dangerously. “Or we will all turn right around and come straight back home. I will give that vicar such a piece of my mind.” Marianne had been reassured, until she saw her father’s admiring smile, the way he had straightened the collar of his smart shirt. And a whole host of other worries had descended in their place.

She had felt Héloïse’s arm anchoring her, pulling her back ever so slightly, so they could speak without being overheard. “Relax,” she heard whispered. One gloved hand was rubbing her arm. It felt absurdly good, made her want to grab the clever fingers and drag their owner all the way to bed, vicar be damned.

“Trying,” she replied.

“It’s carols you know, and people you like.”

“I like you,” Marianne said very quickly. “I like you very much. Most of anyone, in fact. Can’t we just…”

Héloïse stopped her. Kissed her. “I love being like this,” she whispered. “Together. With people. I wasn’t sure that I would, but I’ve missed it. And I’ll be very brave if you will.”

Marianne had kissed her back gently, deliberately. “And then you’ll make a fuss of me afterwards?”

Héloïse smiled in the dark, that gorgeous, guileless smile that seemed amazed by its own appearance. “Of course I will.”

“Come on, slowcoaches!” Miss Blanchard called back to them. She and Steven had reached the graveyard already, where the harlequin lights of the church beyond glowed merrily through the yew and hazel branches. They were watching, and even in the gloom they were visibly smiling. “Mush mush, please. Midnight is curtain down, not kick off.”

The service was lovely.

Marianne and Héloïse had huddled together at the far end of a pew, finding the sweet spot under one of the glowing heat lamps, tucked into the whitewashed flanks out of the way of latecomers. The church was so cold, despite its being crowded, that no-one gave them a second glance, pressed close, linking arms in their bulky coats. As they had taken their seats, Marianne’s father had stood naturally aside for Miss Blanchard. (Veronica, Marianne scolded herself.) He had been formal and polite. And then, suddenly they were giggling together. Something about the pictures on the kneelers. Miss Blanchard slapped his wrist.

Veronica. Marianne would try harder.

But all in all it had seemed as if their little group might have escaped the general notice of the parish. Until they were asked to stand for the first hymn.

Because singing next to Héloïse was an absolute escapade. She sang with sporting levels of pluck and a forgiving attitude to intonation. Everything was an octave too low. Everything, from ‘Silent Night’ to ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ was pitched to rouse the listener for one more push for king and country; one more effort, lads, before showers and a pint. In fact, she did not sing so much as merrily bellow the carols, as if the pews were rugby stands and every verse were ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’.

But she was so happy.

Marianne watched the familiar face exerting itself, the unmistakable shine of enjoyment radiate from its beautiful planes. And she could not be uneasy for her. In fact, she found herself snuggling nearer, wanting one of those long, sure arms to be wound across her back to her waist, so she could feel the even surging of the ribs against her own, the hot cascade of breath, the humming vibration.

Marianne felt compelled to join in. It would have been violent not to. And their combined volume seemed to encourage other, more naturally talented singers in the pews around them. And nothing mattered, really, so much as the roaring happiness next to her. When the final note of ‘It Came Upon a Midnight Clear’ had faded, Marianne found herself saying aloud, “Oh, I love you.” The words carried into the silence more clearly than she had intended, but were greeted by no more than indulgent chuckles from their immediate neighbours, and Héloïse had smiled, and blushed, and pushed closer as they sat together for the reading. And when midnight came, and Merry Christmases were exchanged around the whispering chapel, she had kissed Marianne’s cheek, murmured into her ear, “I love you too.”

Marianne was thinking about the anthem, later, as they walked back, crunching across the icy grounds.

_The tree of life my soul has seen_

_Laden with fruit and always green._

A strange song, she thought, for Christmas. Pretty imagery though, if a little pagan. Even here under the shell of the hoarfrost, the earth itself hardened into bone; here is life. Hands linked in pockets, squeezing. Smiles that warmed like fluid heartbeats. Breaths looping together into air frozen clear and empty all the way up to the stars. They said very little. Very little was needed. They were the gleam on the darkness.

At last, it was Steven who turned, issued the invitation. “Coming in for a Christmas nightcap, ladies?”

“Sounds lovely,” Héloïse replied, although Marianne was burning to get home, to get undressed and close.

“Not a long one, mind,” Miss Blanchard warned, to Marianne’s quick leap of gratitude. “Father Christmas still has some wrapping to do.”

Marianne’s father was all sprightly attention once again, his hands clasped behind his back, angling himself towards his hostess against the pale frost of the playing field. “He doesn’t really, does he?”

“He does.”

“Father Christmas still puts in an appearance for your very definitely extremely grown-up daughter?”

Veronica turned on him, one eyebrow raised in a challenge. “He doesn’t for yours?”

“Well,” he answered, slightly abashed, “no. Not for a stocking anyway. Not since she was little.” But Veronica had swept on.

“There has to be a stocking for somebody, Steven, or it’s hardly Christmas.”

He trotted to keep up with her, shoulders straighter than usual, Marianne noted. And Héloïse’s elbow was squeezing her very tight as they both looked on. “Do you think Father Christmas might have a spare stocking?” he asked brightly. “In that case?”

“What a question!”

“For festive purposes!”

“Steven, did you come ill-prepared in the stocking department?

“I came a complete dog’s dinner, Veronica, if we’re honest. But I do scrub up.”

“Our parents are flirting,” Marianne whispered in the kitchen, swilling glasses, ready to make good their escape.

“No really stone the crows they’re not?” Héloïse giggled, dazzlingly happy-tired.

Marianne smiled at her, so very pretty, bopped her with her hip. “Our parents can’t be flirting.”

“Why?” Héloïse murmured. “Wasn’t that the idea?”

“I wanted them to get on,” Marianne allowed. “I hoped they might amuse each other.”

There was a peal of hearty laughter from the sitting room, pub laughter, boisterous and confident. Héloïse smiled again, warmly this time. “It’s going splendidly, then.”

“Are we really going to leave them together?” Marianne asked into the quiet. And Héloïse, softly, without any malice at all, chuckled at the question.

“Are you concerned for my mother’s honour?” she asked.

But Marianne felt the bite of it, the threat of something unnervingly adolescent rising within her like a ragged phoenix. Embarrassment. She was embarrassed by him still. He had been beautifully behaved all day, whilst maintaining his usual blend of blunt-cheeky-charming, whilst being sociable, whilst making an effort. And it was unfair on him. Marianne knew it was unfair. But all she could feel was the anticipation of shame.

She head-butted Heloise’s shoulder, snuggled in tight to the sure body, felt the firm press of Heloise’s chin, the strong binding of Héloïse’s arms around her like warm armour. She whispered, “I love him to pieces, but he’s a total disaster.”

“You’ve said that before,” Héloïse hummed calmly.

“If he were anyone else’s, I’d say he was a scoundrel.”

“Fine, he’s your lovely scoundrel.” A kiss was planted on the top of Marianne’s head, long and hot and welcome. “You think Mummy can’t see that a mile off?” Her hands crept crabwise up the sturdy muscles of Héloïse’s back and shoulders, until they hung like tired bats from the slope of her neck. “So, they have a spark,” Héloïse whispered. “That’s lovely. Better that way than awkward silence from here to Boxing Day. Let’s go home.”

“You’re sure you wouldn’t rather stay here?” Marianne asked. “For the stockings, I mean.”

And again, Héloïse laughed softly, sleepily, without mockery. “No,” she said plainly. “I have plans for you. Plans that will be much more difficult to accomplish in a guest room.” And something low in Marianne jerked eagerly in agreement. “We can come over first thing, if you want. Early as you like.”

A strange image entered Marianne’s mind suddenly, and she could not tell from where it had originated, except that is seemed completely right. “In pyjamas?” she suggested.

Héloïse threw her head back and laughed, pulling her close by the curve of her hip and swinging her gently. “If you insist.”

“I do.”

“Mmmm and how do we get over here… from the flat… in pyjamas?” she asked, placing a soft kiss on either cheek.

“In dressing gowns,” Marianne replied, “and welly boots. Rapidly.”

“Formal Christmas wear, then.”

And Marianne laughed with her at a last. “Important to make a good impression.”

Their parents barely looked up, as they took their leave. They were sitting opposite one another across the hearth of the open fire. Someone had recently added a log, and the blaze was jigging merrily towards its full roar.

“Happy Christmas, Mummy.”

“Sleep well, darlings.”

The plural had stumbled Marianne for a moment, spurred her to glance at her father, who merely smiled cheerily, as if the word had been his as well. She tried not to worry, tried to resist the words of warning that hovered behind her teeth. Please be polite. Please be kind. Please don’t burn my bridges for me. Instead, she said, “Night, Dad.”

And he had raised his glass. “Night, you two! Be good, okay?”

“Absolutely not,” Héloïse replied, dragging Marianne away by the hand.

Later, in their bed. On their bed. Too tired to kneel, sprawled a little sideways like a mermaid newly, wonderfully parted at the seam. Héloïse riding her hip, her hand, like a queen, hair half fallen eyes closed arms behind her head as if she were moments from them exploding into wings. Marianne, other hand splayed wide across the rolling spine, pulled herself in between the breasts, murmured into trickled sweat. “You are,” she groaned. “You are so good.”

Fingers, latching through her hair, fixing her head hard in place against the sternum as the pace quickened.

Blurred, heavy sleep.

Then excitement, bright as the snow on the Christmas cards.

“How early is too early?”

Perfect as the light on Héloïse’s bare shoulder.

“Are we really going to shower, and _then_ put on pyjamas?”

“Yes.”

“This is a choice we are making?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” she said, her smile engulfing the room. “Just checking.”

Warm showers. Quickly swallowed tea. One chocolate coin each, because the sharpness of the foil edges under the thumbnail marked the day’s beginning, and there should be one day a year, at least, where chocolate is the first thing to be eaten. And then, they were laughing, sliding arm in arm over the icy road in their dressing gowns, Florence in one pocket, and all the chocolate in the other. “What time is it actually?”

“Nearly eight.”

“I suppose they might not be up.”

“We can be quiet. Make the coffee. Get the fire going. Have the sitting room to ourselves for a bit.”

The grounds were stunning, crystalline and gleaming with layered frost, ice birthing ice in the last of the grey darkness. They admired for a moment, wrapped around each other, until they remembered they had not brought gloves, and dashed, giggling and shivering for the front door. They tried to be quiet, but the cold had their breath bouncing in their chests, and it was hard not to roar out the chill as the hall’s warmth hit them. Hushing one another, removing squeaking wellingtons on the coloured tiles, picking through to the sitting room to see, just to see, if the easy childish miracle of stockings had indeed come to pass.

And both their parents turned to look at them in surprise.

“Oh!” Veronica uttered with a confused, powdery smile. “Steven. They’re up.”

They were sitting exactly where they had been some seven hours before, dressed for church, in front of the fire. The stack of logs in the box was much lower now, but the blaze still merrily shimmied, even as the sun was threatening to rise through the bay window. An empty bottle of wine sat on the rug between them. Another was on the hearth.

Steven grinned at them both, rubbing his face with the flat of his hand and stretching. “All right, eager beavers. What sort of time do you call this?”

Héloïse and Marianne replied in perfect unison. “Eight.”

“Oh,” said Veronica blinking in surprise.

“Blimey,” Steven said. Before cracking up. And then Veronica was laughing too. And Marianne began to wonder whether they might not both be tipsy.

“Darlings,” Veronica said between giggles, untucking her feet from the sofa and smoothing her skirt, “I am very much afraid that Father Christmas might _still_ have some wrapping to do.”

“Mummy,” Héloïse said through a grin a mile wide, leaning on the door jamb, “has Father Christmas been to bed?”

“Father Christmas has not.”

“Is Father Christmas a bit the worse for wear?”

“Father Christmas might be.”

“Does Father Christmas need a coffee?”

“Yes, please. Lots, please,” said Steven very definitely.

“And about half an hour,” Veronica added, her face caught between laughter and apology.

In the kitchen, Marianne and Héloïse held each other in near silent hysterics as the kettle boiled, unable to move in case they gave themselves away.

“I think,” Héloïse whispered, “I think they might…”

“Oh god,” Marianne mumbled into her shoulder, wanting to die, and also for this moment of sweet, agonised hilarity to last for ever.

“I _think_ they might get on.”

Part 3

What is a young couple to do, on a Christmas afternoon? When the food has been eaten, and the presents unwrapped. When the weather has turned against walking. And when both exhausted parents sleep soundly and obliviously in chairs either side of the fire.

Marianne and Héloïse snuggled together on the sofa, drank cups of tea, read new books. They ate sugared almonds, and spoke in low voices to the occasional muffled accompaniment of snoring.

“Which of them is the sillier do you think?”

Marianne glanced fondly between the pair of them. “I think we should resign ourselves to roughly equal levels of parental silliness.”

“Really?” Héloïse kissed her temple, nuzzling into her ear. “I thought for sure you would say your dad, after his trick with the trifle.”

“Your mother is wearing fuzzy reindeer socks,” Marianne pointed out.

“Which you gave her.”

“Because objectively excellent.”

When one or other of the sleepers stirred, their watchers would hush themselves, wondering if now was the moment they should sit up, unwind from one another. But it took long, lazy hours to reach that stage.

“Five pounds your father says the silliest thing of the evening.”

Marianne raised her eyebrows. “Oh, you are _on_ ,” she smirked. “Filthy? Almost certainly he will. But silly? Given her mood over lunch, I think your mother might just pip him.”

“Well, she is wildly under-slept.”

Marianne observed the familiar tucked shape of Miss B, of Veronica, curled in the armchair as she had been all those many months ago, when a kiss from Héloïse had been acknowledgement and apology and challenge all at once. “How often does she conk out in that chair?” she asked.

“More than she will ever admit to,” Héloïse replied, stroking Marianne’s arms. “She works too hard.”

“Is that possible?” Marianne asked, settling into the warm strength of kneading fingers. “Doesn’t she live for the job?”

“No,” Héloïse said softly. “She just doesn’t take a break. She’s not actually an abbess, despite first impressions.”

Marianne leaned her head back, rested it on Heloise’s chest, so that in turning just slightly, her hair rubbed against the heavenly softness of the cheek and the point of the chin and the wet parted lips. She was a cat today it would seem, shamelessly so, and Héloïse did not appear to mind. “That first morning, when she gave me the tour,” Marianne whispered, “she swore at me.” The hands stopped. This had not been the plan at all.

“She didn’t!” Héloïse exclaimed, and Marianne groaned herself backwards, to see if she couldn’t restart the massage from above.

“Well, no, not at me. She used a naughty rude word and I realised there was a chance I might actually get on with her.”

Héloïse laughed softly. “Odd way to decide,” she murmured, kissing the edge of Marianne’s brow, the cool globe of her eyelid, the summit of her cheekbone. “When did I first swear in front of you?”

Marianne reached up with one arm to her love, looping around to the nape of the neck where she knew without seeing that the hair grew soft and dark, ran it through her fingers, counting back the weeks and months in hair after fine, warm hair. “Is ‘plank’ a swearword?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then I can’t remember.”

Héloïse laughed again. “What did you ever see in me?”

“Good shoulders,” Marianne murmured dreamily. “Nice bum.” She smiled to herself. “Sexy, sexy wheelbarrow.”

And Héloïse shushed her and kissed her throat and for a short while the sleeping parents were forgotten.

Another log was added to the fire. The curtains were closed. The parents woke and realised that they did not need more food, thank you, but maybe another coffee, darlings, and a glass of water. And then definitely more wine, yes, why not?

“Are you wanting to stay the night?” Veronica asked Héloïse. “I can make up another bed.”

“We hadn’t planned on it.”

“You just seem to have come prepared,” her mother went on with the hint of a tease.

The coffee tray had been placed on the floor where she and Steven were trying his new backgammon set. She reached for his cup without asking and poured him a second helping, then poured one for herself, taking more sugar than usual.

“Day pyjamas,” Marianne replied, watching carefully from behind her book. “My idea. You could join us, if you like. Very comfortable.”

“Thank you, dear,” Miss Blanchard said smoothly. “But my pyjamas are not fit for the drawing room.”

“And I sleep in the nude,” Steven added, not looking up.

“You don’t mind if we go home?” Héloïse asked, grinning to herself.

And both their parents answered that no, no they would be fine, that was fine, totally fine.

“Weather looks better tomorrow,” Marianne commented. “Maybe we could all go for a walk in the afternoon.”

“Why not in the morning?” Héloïse asked. “Do you fancy coming for a run with me Steven? Bright and early?”

“Nah, thanks. Veronica and I plan to go out,” he replied, straight-faced. He sent a playful wink his hostess’s way, as she watched him with a mild but recognisable amusement. “Paint the town… village… pub… paint something red, anyway. We’ll need serious hangover time,” he said, returning his attention to the next backgammon move. “And maybe bail money.”

“Dad, don’t be a twit. It’s Christmas,” Marianne said softly. “Nothing will be open.”

“You,” he stated, “are no fun.”

Héloïse’s grin was just on the point of becoming visible to the layman, when Veronica chuckled to herself and said, “I have only been bailed out of the drunk tank once in my life, Steven. That was quite enough.” And Heloise’s expression plummeted.

“Mummy?” she demanded. “Mummy!” And then again, just in case her feelings had not been made clear, “Mummy…”

“What?” Veronica protested, pretending to be absorbed by the game. “It was the seventies, darling. Worse things happened at sea.”

“Certainly did,” Steven added matter-of-factly, whilst his expression positively glowed. “Can confirm.”

“But when?”

“University, of course,” she said, as if that much should have been obvious. “They caught me halfway up the Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus. Trying to hang… Well,” she paused, sitting back on her heels and studying the ceiling, as if guidance on propriety were to be found dangling from the light fittings. “Let us just say that I was trying to decorate his back leg.”

Steven was shaking with laughter, his gaze managing to encompass both a wolfish naughtiness and and something rather starry-eyed and sweet. Héloïse on the other hand was gaping.

“Mother,” she said. And her tone was unmistakably proud. “Mother! What on earth did Grandpa Blanchard say?”

“Oh, he never found out,” Veronica breezily answered. “Thank goodness. He would have blown a gasket.” And then after a pause she added. “Neither did Henry, come to think of it. I never told him. Didn’t think he would see the funny side, somehow. Maybe that was unfair of me.”

Steven cleared his throat. “Henry, that would be your…”

“My ex,” Veronica said simply, but her voice was low. And then, with a small smile flashed to her daughter she added, “Héloïse’s Daddy. Very sensible young man when I met him. That was after the… the _police_ escapade. He was very grown up and serious.” Marianne noted that Héloïse had become rather still and watchful as her mother went on, “I think that’s why I liked him so much. We complemented one another. When we were younger.”

“He was a stick in the mud,” Héloïse said quietly. “And you were a riot, was that it?”

“No, darling,” Veronica corrected her gently. “I was an idiot.” And her smile was very fond for just a moment. “And he was my good influence.”

Marianne was aware of the moment of imbalance, of the wobble on the knife’s edge, and then she physically sensed Héloïse relax, felt the exhalation, the choice. She tucked her feet sideways, and held on to Marianne’s ankle with one hot hand. She was okay. This was okay. She had decided it would be. And Marianne breathed again.

Steven smiled, sniffing the air, feeling the temperature settle. Marianne regretted not telling him more about the situation, suddenly worried that he might make it into a badly timed joke. But he simply said, “Nice to have those people at the right moment, isn’t it?”

Veronica smiled back at him, slightly misty. “Very nice.”

“Who knows?” he grinned. “A bit earlier and he might have saved you from trying to fly your knickers from a London landmark.”

“Nothing could have dissuaded me,” Veronica groaned. “And I don’t believe I said it was my knickers, Steven.”

“Was it your knickers, Veronica?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny.”

“Wonderful!” he beamed. “Bloody marvellous! The flower of British youth. The hope of this great nation.”

“Oh do shut up and take your turn.”

“All okay?” Marianne whispered, flexing her feet so that Héloïse could feel her.

“Yes,” came the hushed reply.

“Do you want to go home?” And Héloïse glanced round at her gratefully, but then looked back at the little scene on the carpet, at Steven lying on his belly with his feet in the air, at her mother sitting over from him, her curls lit by the Christmas tree in ever shifting reds and greens. She smiled to herself.

“Not yet,” she whispered back.

Marianne nudged her in the ribs with her tiptoes. “Oi. Godard. We even?”

“Yes,” Héloïse replied. “Very even split of silliness.”

They tuned back into the conversation just in time to hear Veronica murmur, “And after our children are gone, you can tell me all about Rio.”

“Hey.”

They had fallen behind a bit; Marianne and her father. They had never been a walking family on the whole, and he was wearing inappropriate shoes, bless him, but still making a good show of it, trudging gamely up the hill after the striding shapes of Héloïse and her mother.

“Yes! Fine!” he wheezed. “Just a bit… Just warming up, aren’t I? Stretching the old hamstrings. Flexing the glutes.” He slipped sideways on a soft patch of earth, and Marianne just managed to stop herself from laughing. She caught his jacket sleeve, hauled him upright.

“Another late one?” she asked him.

He shot her a sidelong glare, as if unwilling to give himself away. “We made the most of the day,” he replied with cagy good humour. “Saw it in. Saw it off in style. You get how it is.”

“I dread to think, knowing you.”

She expected him to bluster, to make a joke, employ his usual rascally bravado. But instead, he raised his eyebrows, stared at his feet grinning to himself, scratched the back of his neck which was suddenly red. “No, nothing…” he started. “Nothing like that. I wouldn’t… I mean, I’m a talker and she’s a hoot and we found some brandy.”

“And suddenly it was eight a.m.?”

“Three.”

Marianne groaned good-naturedly. “Well, I’m glad you get on,” she said, resuming their climb.

Her father stopped. Said, “Are you?”

Marianne turned to look at him carefully. “Of course,” she said seriously. “It’s important to us.” She wet her lips, finding that they were suddenly dry. “If you hadn’t seen eye to eye we would have still found a way to…”

“She’s asked me to stay until New Year,” her father interrupted. “Ronnie has.”

“Ronnie?” Marianne repeated.

“Yeah. Ronnie. Veronica.”

Marianne stuttered. “Ronnie.” Interrogated her feelings, searching for signs of that recent rising horror. Found instead that she was smiling. “And what did you say?”

“That I would ask you,” he said quietly.

“You don’t have to check with me, Dad.”

“Don’t I?”

“No! Stay, if you want to.”

“It’s just,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets, letting his host get further ahead, before continuing in a low voice, “sometimes I get the feeling that you’re just waiting for me to… bollocks everything up for you.”

Marianne stood back a little, felt the impact, owned it. “I’m not, Dad,” she said. But her voice was nowhere near as convincing as she had wanted it to be. Her father nodded to himself.

“I know you’ve got this… nice thing going on here. With Héloïse, of course. But with the job and this… place…” he said looking around himself. “I mean, fuck. I don’t want to mess it up for you either.”

“Dad,” Marianne felt her face burn suddenly. “You haven’t. You won’t. I’m sorry. Stay.”

“Do you mean that?” he asked, his eyes narrowed.

Marianne thought about it. Seriously. Before saying. “Yes. Please stay. It’s been lovely.”

And then he smiled. She wasn’t sure she had ever seen him relieved before. He offered his arm. “It has, hasn’t it? I mean… no Christmas curry. Which is a crying shame, but still…”

There was a shout from up the hill. Veronica’s voice. “Come on, you wimpy pair!”

And Steven was grinning. “Curry or no curry,” he murmured, “she’s quite something.”

“Dad!” The trudged onwards, side by side, wobbling a little over the uneven ground, over the unaccustomed closeness. “Did you bring enough pants?” Marianne asked him.

“Yes.”

Walking up the hill together, to where the rest of their party, blonde haired and stormy-eyed and entirely marvellous, awaited them at the turn of the path. Marianne squeezed his arm. What a year, she thought. What a time.

“How many did you bring?” she asked.

“One.”

“Dad.”

“Kidding.” He squeezed back. And together they all walked on.

**Author's Note:**

> The anthem is 'Jesus Christ the Apple Tree'. And I love it.
> 
> [And yes, this is also where the title comes from](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78rwIocsHGI)


End file.
